doing homework listening

The 7 Laws of Multitasking

The two main hazards (and two main benefits) of multitasking..

Posted December 16, 2014

• Understanding Attention
• Take our ADHD Test
• Find a therapist to help with ADHD

You’ve been told that multitasking is a bad idea. Articles and essays appear every day telling you why multitasking is dangerous, makes things take longer, tires out your brain, reduces the quality of your work, and lowers your IQ . And, for the most part, these warnings are all based on good research. 1, 2

But have you ever noticed that you still multitask in many ways, and it usually works out just fine?

The truth is that sometimes multitasking is a very bad idea, sometimes it doesn’t help, but also doesn’t hurt much, and sometimes it brings great benefits. The point of this essay is to help us tell the difference.

And, with that, I present the seven laws of multitasking.

Law One: Some tasks mix well.

In the simplest case, when you multitask, you have a primary task (task A), and a secondary task (task B). The primary task is your priority. The secondary task is tacked on as something else you can enjoy or accomplish at the same time.

Sometimes the two tasks will mix well. Here are some examples:

• listening to music while practicing a sports skill
• talking with strangers while waiting in line
• listening to a talk radio program while driving (sometimes)
• listening to music while working.
• talking on the phone while cooking
• cleaning a room while doing a weight workout
• doing dishes while waiting for a video game to load
• watching television while folding laundry
• listening to an audiobook while exercising
• drinking coffee while talking with a friend
• eating popcorn while watching a movie

And, contrary to idiom, even chewing gum while walking works out just fine most of the time.

On the other hand, . . .

Law Two: Some tasks mix poorly.

Sometimes tasks don’t mix well. Here are some examples:

• texting while driving
• monitoring social media while doing high-focus creative work
• watching television while doing homework
• listening to a podcast while writing
• listening to music with lyrics while reading
• talking with friends while watching a movie
• emailing one person while talking with another
• playing angry birds while landing a commercial passenger jet.

These examples, good and bad, come from my own experience, from common experience, and from the research literature. One or two of the examples might fail to resonate for you, but the point remains: multitasking is a mixed bag.

Now let’s see if we can figure out what makes multitasking good in some cases and bad in others.

Law Three: It’s partly about switching costs.

Imagine you have a small kitchen, and you plan to make two omelets and two batches of cookies. In what order should you do your cooking?

When you make an omelet, you must get out the eggs, the cheese, a cutting board, a knife, some spices, some vegetables, a skillet, and a mixing bowl. Then you make the omelet. And, if you’re like me, when you’re finished, you still have a dirty mixing bowl, cutting board and skillet sitting there, with the eggs, cheese, and maybe some extra veggies still sitting on the counter. At some point you will need to clean up and put things away.

So we can break the task of making a single omelet into three parts: 1) setup, 2) make the omelet, 3) cleanup.

And the same goes for baking cookies. You’ll have the same three components to that task: setup, make the cookies, and cleanup.

Now consider two plans for making the two omelets and two batches of cookies:

Plan 1 : omelet, cookies, omelet, cookies

Plan 2 : omelet, omelet, cookies, cookies.

And consider how much time and effort is required for each plan.

With plan 1 you will need to:

• setup for omelet
• make omelet
• setup for cookies
• make cookies

With plan 2 you will need to:

When you alternate tasks, you have to clean up task A before you can setup for task B (remember, this is a small kitchen). And it turns out that you can save a lot of work by focusing on one kind of food at a time instead of switching between them. You save two setups and two cleanups by following plan 2 instead of plan 1. This is the benefit of batch processing. It saves on overhead.

The same thing happens in your brain when you multitask. For example, when you sit down to do some homework your mind has to do some setup tasks. It must load certain information into short term memory , build appropriate mental models, erect filters to keep irrelevant information out, and so forth.

Now, if you switch your attention to watching television for a few seconds, you must free up some of the resources being used for homework, and prepare some new mental resources that are needed to track the show you’re watching.

So your mind has to perform some cleanup and setup work every time you switch from homework to television, and every time you switch back as well. These are known as “switching costs”, and they cost you in terms of both time and energy.

The costs might be small for an individual switch, but after an hour of homework/television they add up, and you might find you got only half of the homework done you could have, and you might be more mentally weary as well. 2

And the switching costs will be even greater if your primary task is a complicated creative endeavor, such as constructing a mathematical proof, developing a theory in physics, writing about a complicated topic, or coding a complex algorithm.

Richard Feynman had the following to say about allowing creative work to be interrupted (whether by accident or through multitasking):

“To do high, real good physics work you do need absolutely solid lengths of time, so that when you’re putting ideas together which are vague and hard to remember, it’s very much like building a house of cards and each of the cards is shaky, and if you forget one of them the whole thing collapses again. You don’t know how you got there and you have to build them up again, . . .” 3

The problem is that, when you’re doing complicated work, you often have to build up intricate mental models, and you’re pushing yourself to the edge of your capacity to concentrate. And when you take your attention away from your creative task and attend to an interruption, the mental models dissolve. And you probably won’t be able to build them back up the way they were.

It’s like having your computer crash while writing a paper, and realizing you hadn’t saved your document for half an hour. It will cost you time and energy trying to get everything built back up, and you might not actually get it back the way it was.

The real tragedy here is not that sometimes geniuses lose track of where they were. Geniuses typically value deep concentration and take measures to protect against interruption. The real tragedy is that many chronic multitaskers never bother with deep concentration, and might never discover the genius within them.

Law Four: It’s partly about resource conflict.

Another problem with mutitasking is that task A and task B might need the same mental resource, and they can’t both use it at the same time.

If a person listens to light instrumental music while sending an email message, there is typically little problem. Task B (listening to music) makes use of mental resources not needed for task A (writing the email message). If our email writer sub-vocalizes as she writes, there might be some auditory involvement, but the music won’t require verbal processing, so the degree of conflict is minimal.

If, on the other hand, she talks with a colleague while writing her email, then there is much more conflict over mental resources. Task B requires the person to construct and communicate meaning in sentences, just like task A does. Both require empathy and social strategizing as well. Trying to do both tasks at the same time will cause high switching costs and a greater chance of error.

Texting while driving is an iconic case of resource conflict. Both tasks compete over visual attention. When you switch your gaze from driving to texting, you will no longer be able to see new driving hazards as long as you are looking at your phone. Plus it takes some time to get situation awareness when you look back to the road. That’s why texting and driving is now the number one cause of death for teen drivers. 4

In general, when it’s important to do task A well, we should not also take on a secondary task that competes with the primary task for key resources.

Law Five: It’s partly about sweetening the pot.

But there are benefits to multitasking. Sometimes we are staring down a relatively simple task that we just don’t want to do (such as folding clothes). But we know that we would be much happier doing that task if we could do something else pleasant or useful at the same time (such as watching television or listening to an audio book). So we multitask in order to “sweeten the pot”, so we will have the motivation needed to perform the primary task.

We might not fold the clothes in record time. There will be some switching costs. But the alternative, if we’re being frank, is that we won’t fold the clothes at all. And, since the task is relatively simple, the switching costs will be manageable.

Or sometimes the primary task will contain periods of activity interspersed with periods of inactivity, while another task can be broken into small chunks that can fit those gaps. When I workout with weights, I perform sets of exercise with periods of rest in between. When I clean my office I do a series of discrete tasks with natural break points between subtasks (clear the clutter from my desk, empty a trash can, etc.).

That makes these two activities a natural fit. If I arrange to do cleaning tasks during the rest intervals in my workout, that “sweetens the pot” for both tasks. I normally don’t like cleaning my office, and will put it off repeatedly. But, if I can make use of the dead times in my workout, it seems worthwhile, because there’s little else of value I would be able to do during those two-minute rest periods.

Multitasking can help us start a task we don’t want to do, and it can also keep us doing a task when we’ve grown impatient. When the car trip gets boring , we can play twenty-questions. When we get impatient waiting in line, we can strike up a conversation with a stranger.

And pot-sweetening is just one of the two main possible benefits of multitasking.

Law Six: It’s partly about setting picks.

In basketball, it’s easier to score when you’re not being harassed by an opponent. That’s why teammates will sometimes position themselves at a spot on the floor and just stand still. The player with the ball can then dribble close enough to the teammate that the shadowing defender must either run into the teammate, go around the teammate, or switch assignments with the teammate’s defender. Sometimes this allows the player with the ball to get off a clean shot. The teammate in this case is “setting a pick”.

Likewise, a well-chosen secondary task can “set a pick” for the primary task by blocking out potential distractors.

When we work on a task, our minds do many things. Parts of our mind are concerned with executing our primary task. They help us keep the goal in mind, make plans, execute those plans, work around obstacles, keep the right things in memory for easy access, and so on. These are “foreground” processes.

At the same time other parts of our mind are looking out for signs of danger, looping through other problems we are dealing with, monitoring our internal states, or looking for opportunities to switch to more rewarding tasks. These are “background processes”. And background processes have a way of getting us off track at times.

So here’s the thing. This is where we can use multitasking to our advantage. If we choose our secondary task wisely, it can compete for resources with background processes that might otherwise interrupt us. And that means the right task B can actually help us stay focused on task A. Here’s how we might formalize that strategy:

Background Process Interference Strategy: when background processes are likely to interrupt a primary task, try to find a secondary task that will compete for resources with the background processes, but not with the foreground processes.

In other words, use task B to “set a pick” for task A.

If you don’t like doing yard work, and you know that parts of your brain will be looking for more rewarding things to do, and will be sending a constant stream of rationalizations to your mind to try to get you to quit, then you can run interference by listening to a podcast. Listening to the podcast will compete with the background processes for a key resource (strategic thinking), but will not compete substantially for the resources being used by the primary task.

On the other hand, if you’re writing an essay, and you fear your background processes will be trying to get you to quit, setting a pick with a podcast won’t work as well. In that case, task B will interfere not only with the background processes but also with the foreground processes -- like a clumsy teammate who tries to set a pick and knocks over the ball-handler in the process.

Law Seven: It’s all about making trade-offs.

It should be clear by now that we can’t say full stop whether multitasking is good or bad. It all depends on features of task A, features of task B, how A and B interact, and what a person’s goals are.

When it’s important to do the primary task well (driving), we must be extra careful about switching costs and resource conflict (that’s why texting while driving is a terrible idea). When it’s not that important, we can be more relaxed about those costs, and be more open to some of the benefits of multitasking (watching television while folding clothes is probably fine).

Sometimes it will be important to do task A quickly (studying for a test the night before an exam) and sometimes it won’t matter too much how long it takes (folding laundry on an otherwise empty evening). When it’s important to do a task quickly, we must be extra concerned about switching costs (and we might opt for some mid-tempo instrumental music to help us focus and block out distractions while we study -- instead of watching a television program).

Sometimes we are motivated to do task A (playing a new video game), and sometimes we lack motivation (working out). When we lack motivation, a well-chosen task B might just sweeten the pot.

Sometimes we are so familiar with task A, we do much of it on “auto-pilot”. And sometimes task A takes our full attention. That’s why listening to a talk program on radio can be a good idea for an experienced driver, but a bad idea for a student just learning to drive.

Sometimes task A is complicated (writing an essay), and other times it’s simple (folding clothes). Switching costs are usually higher for complicated tasks.

And so, in order to tell whether a given case of multitasking is good or bad, we will have to weigh the costs against the benefits on a case by case basis.

Conclusion: some specific and useful strategies.

We’ve covered a lot of ground. Here are the key lessons in a nutshell:

We’ve seen that multitasking can be a bad idea when:

• there are high switching costs
• there is resource conflict between task A and task B

And we’ve seen that it can be a good idea when:

• task B “sweetens the pot” for task A
• task B can “set a pick” for task A

And we’ve seen that the wisdom of multitasking can also depend on other features of task A and task B:

• how important it is to do them well
• how familiar they are
• how important it is to do them quickly
• how motivated we are to do them
• how complicated they are

Let’s finish with a few specific and useful ways to apply these lessons:

• Multitasking can be dangerous. When it’s important to do task A well, we should be very careful about choosing a task B, and err on the side of caution. We should never text and drive, or talk on the phone while driving. And we should take steps to make sure our passengers will not distract us with rowdiness or emotionally challenging conversations (this is of special relevance for those of us with children).
• Multitasking can hinder creative productivity . When working on a creative project that pushes us to the limits of our concentration, we should not multitask in ways that will expose us to interruptions of the primary activity (for example, while writing an essay, we should close our facebook, twitter, and email clients, and check them only after we’ve done a good chunk of creative work).
• Multitasking can assist creative productivity. Well-chosen secondary tasks can set picks for our creative projects, and can help us maintain focus against background processes that might otherwise interrupt us (for instance while writing an essay in a coffee shop, we might listen to invigorating instrumental music to block out ambient noises, conversations, and internal signals of discomfort).
• Multitasking can help us be more patient. We tend to grow impatient when we have a goal and we have just learned that it’s going to cost us more to reach our goal than we originally thought. And our tendency when we are impatient is to either try to find shortcuts or to abandon our goal for another goal. But sometimes the right course of action is to simply stay the course and absorb the extra costs. The right task B can both sweeten the pot, and set picks on those voices in our heads trying to get us to change course. For instance, we might talk with a stranger while waiting in line, so we don’t bolt, or listen to an audiobook while stuck in heavy traffic, so we don’t plot out risky and minimally productive lane-changing maneuvers (For more on impatience, see “The 7 Laws of Impatience” ).
• Well-chosen music mixes with almost everything. Well-chosen music has a magical ability to both sweeten the pot and set picks for almost any activity -- while avoiding resource conflict and switching costs almost entirely. The music must be chosen carefully, so it does not provide resource conflict (for instance songs with lyrics might not be optimal for reading, and death metal might be a poor choice for meditation ). But there is usually a good choice for almost any activity. Some tasks might not mix well with any kind of music, but these will probably be rare for most people.

1 Ophir, Nass, Wagner, “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers”

2 Armstrong and Chung, “Background Television and Reading Memory in Context”

3 Richard P. Feynman “The pleasure of finding things out.” p. 19

4 Delthia Ricks, "Study: Texting while driving now leading cause of death for teen drivers"

Further Reading

The 7 Laws of Impatience -- Jim Stone

Jim Stone, Ph.D., is a philosopher, avid student of motivational psychology, and developer of personal productivity software and workshops.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

• Corpus ID: 141221832

Doing Homework: Listening to Students,' Parents,' and Teachers' Voices in One Urban Middle School Community

• Jianzhong Xu , R. Yuan
• Published 1 October 2003
• Education, Sociology
• School Community Journal

86 Citations

Homework: at home or at school—attitudes of teachers, parents and the general public: a case study, views of students, parents, and teachers on homework in elementary school..

• Highly Influenced

Conceptualising homework in an Essex primary school: learning from our community

Secondary school students' interest in homework: what about race and school location, positive dispositions and close alignment: using bourdieusian concepts to understand parents' and teachers' perceptions of homework, middle school teachers' perceptions regarding the motivation and effectiveness of homework, relevance interventions in the classroom: a means to promote students’ homework motivation and behavior, race and gender differences in teacher perceptions of student homework performance: a preliminary examination, the role of parents' motivation in students' autonomous motivation for doing homework., 33 references, parents' reported involvement in students' homework: strategies and practices, classwork and homework in early adolescence: the ecology of achievement, parental involvement in homework, the forgotten voices in homework: views of students.

• Highly Influential

Homework: a cross-cultural examination.

Case studies of families doing third-grade homework.

• 10 Excerpts

Homework: a survey of policies in the United States.

Relationships among attitudes about homework, amount of homework assigned and completed, and student achievement, homework emotion management reported by high school students., family help and homework management reported by middle school students, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

4 best music for homework that’ll dramatically improve your productivity

Choosing the right music for homework can help you focus better and learn faster.

Around 60% of students tend to listen to music while studying. Researchers also found that listening to music was the most popular side activity for teens who juggled studying with another task.

While we may prefer different genres of focus music, we can all agree that the right playlist has the magical ability to boost concentration.

This is because music activates the most diverse networks of the human brain. It’s been proven that people with ADHD focus better with the right music.

This is on top of  existing research  that has found listening to music reduces anxiety, blood pressure, and improves sleep quality, mood, and memory.

Johns Hopkins University researchers have done work on jazz performers improvising inside an fMRI machine to see which areas of the brain light up as well.

They found that jazz musicians make unique improvisations by turning off inhibition and turning up creativity.

In short, if you find the right music for homework, you can elevate both brain power and creativity.

While there isn’t a one-size-fit-all approach to this, let us help you narrow down some of the best genres for you to try:

Here are the five best music for homework to help you increase your productivity:

Having the right music matters, even for top athletes. Source: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

1. Classical music

When picking music for homework, you’ve probably heard how classical music can increase your focus when studying.

There’s a theory dubbed “The Mozart Effect” that suggests this genre of music can enhance brain activity and arouse your brain to focus.

There are also several studies done where students listening to classical music did better on quizzes than students with no music.

Suggestions:

• ClassicFM  (a free radio streaming platform that plays famous classical pieces)
• “Study Playlist: Classical Music” on Spotify
• “Classical Music for When You’re on a Deadline” on YouTube

2. Video game music 

This might surprise you but video game music is actually one of the best music for homework. According to Orion Academy , video game music is designed to keep you absorbed and focused — which is also great for memorising. 

When your brain is focused on just melody, it’s taking a break from trying to break down the lyrics of a song and thus increases your performance .

Video game music tends to stay at a relatively low, constant volume too, preventing you from becoming distracted by sudden increases in volume.

Since video game music is generally fast-paced, your brain will be constantly engaged in the task at hand.

• “Video game soundtracks” on Spotify
• “Video game music for studying” on YouTube
• Choose favourites from this list and create your own playlist!

If you’re someone who easily gets distracted, RnB may not be the best music for homework for you. There’s a high chance that you might spend too much time jamming to the lyrics of the song instead of focusing.

Though music under his genre generally has lyrics, many RnB fans reported feeling more relaxed, focused, and less stressed, which may have a positive impact on their ability to focus and learn.

• “Study R&B Smooth Songs ” on Spotify
• “Chill R&B Beats Mix – Beats to Relax and Study (Vol.1)” on YouTube

4. Nature sounds 

It’s been shown that nature sounds relax our nervous system. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  have also discovered that natural sounds boost moods and focus.

The study found employees were more productive and had more positive feelings when nature sounds were playing in the background while they worked.

Nature sounds include the soothing sounds of the rain, ocean waves on the beach or even the jungle. Some prefer listening to bird calls and animal noises, so feel free to explore if nature sounds aren’t the right music for homework for you. 

Relaxing Nature Sounds for Sleeping – Natural Calm Forest Waterfall Music Meditation Sound for Study on YouTube

“Nature Sounds For Concentration” on Spotify

Popular stories

Free therapy for the broke: 5 creative hobbies to try.

The dark side of Russell Group universities

The greatest cheating scandals in schools and universities of all time

This skill will land you a ‘fairytale-like’ internship at Cartier

Why are certain genres of music more effective in helping you study than others?

This is the ultimate focus music for students, according to research

These are the best music types to engage your brain

REQUEST INFO

Best Study Playlists - Study Music, Focus Music

Everybody has their own routine for how to study for exams, do homework, read or focus on a particular task. Listening to a study playlist is a great way to center your attention and lift your mood. Listening to music can also reduce stress, which is a plus when it comes to balancing a busy schedule of work, school and family!

Music Therapy has proven that you can process a wide range of emotions from excitement to thoughtfulness depending on what type of music you listen to. When we’re studying, we’re probably aiming for thoughtfulness. Research has also shown music has the potential to boost memory, which can be a huge plus.  However, complex and distracting music might not be the way to go when choosing the right studying playlist for you.

We have found that the best genres of music to listen to while studying, reading or writing include minimalist, classical, piano and low-fi music. We’ve compiled some of the best lyric-free playlists that will act as brain food while keeping your attention on your studies so you can ace that test and earn that A.

Best Study Playlists on Spotify

1. This more than 24-hour playlist is full of piano and classical songs to help you focus.

2. Lofi Girl curates some of the most relaxing and engaging playlists. Her use of lo-fi tracks mixed with ambient pieces will keep you relaxed but never bored.

3. This playlist is all instrumental all the time!

Best YouTube Study Playlists

1. This is a deep-focus playlist so you know you’ll finish what you need to get done!

2. This Bossa Nova & Jazz playlist is a MOOD. It will transport you to a lovely cafe, on a rainy day. 

3. This extra ambient playlist describes itself as “brain power, focus concentration music.” You’ll feel like you’re in a sound bath.

Music is just one way to improve your mental health. See more tips on how to improve your mental health as an online student. 

10 MENTAL HEALTH TIPS FOR ONLINE STUDENTS

*Arizona Online does not endorse playlist creators. Music is not guaranteed to boost academic performance. 

Related Articles

EdD vs PhD – Key Differences Compared Online Learning Community

Commencement at the University of Arizona Online Learning Community

What Can You Do With a Biology Degree? Online Learning Community

REQUEST INFORMATION

March 3, 2020

Does Music Boost Your Cognitive Performance?

The answer depends on your personality

By Cindi May

Getty Images

Music makes life better in so many ways. It elevates mood , reduces stress and eases pain . Music is heart-healthy , because it can lower blood pressure , reduce heart rate and decrease stress hormones in the blood. It also connects us with others and enhances social bonds . Music can even improve workout endurance and increase our enjoyment of challenging activities .

The fact that music can make a difficult task more tolerable may be why students often choose to listen to it while doing their homework or studying for exams. But is listening to music the smart choice for students who want to optimize their learning?

A new study by Manuel Gonzalez of Baruch College and John Aiello of Rutgers University suggests that for some students, listening to music is indeed a wise strategy, but for others, it is not. The effect of music on cognitive functioning appears not to be “one-size-fits-all” but to instead depend, in part, on your personality—specifically, on your need for external stimulation. People with a high requirement for such stimulation tend to get bored easily and to seek out external input. Those individuals often do worse , paradoxically, when listening to music while engaging in a mental task. People with a low need for external stimulation, on the other hand, tend to improve their mental performance with music.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

But other factors play a role as well. Gonzalez and Aiello took a fairly sophisticated approach to understanding the influence of music on intellectual performance, assessing not only listener personality but also manipulating the difficulty of the task and the complexity of the music. Whether students experience a perk or a penalty from music depends on the interplay of the personality of the learner, the mental task, and the music.

In the study, participants first completed the Boredom Proneness Scale , which is a personality test used to determine need for external stimulation. They then engaged in an easy cognitive task (searching for the letter A in lists of words) and a more challenging one (remembering word pairs). To control for practice and fatigue effects, half of the subjects completed the easy task first, while the other half completed the challenging one first. Participants finished both tasks under one of three sound conditions: (a) no music, (b) simple music or (c) complex music. All of the music was instrumental, and music complexity was manipulated by varying the number of instruments involved in the piece. Simple music included piano, strings and synthesizer, while complex music added drums and bass to the simple piece.

The data suggest that your decision to turn music on (or off) while studying should depend on your personality. For those with a high need of external stimulation, listening to music while learning is not wise, especially if the task is hard and/or the music is complex. On the simple task of finding A’s, such subjects’ scores for the music condition were the same (for simple music) or significantly worse (for complex music) than those for the silent condition. On the complex task of learning word pairs, their performance was worse whenever music was played, regardless of whether it was simple or complex.

For those with a low need of external stimulation, however, listening to music is generally the optimal choice. On the simple task of findings A’s, such participants’ scores for the music condition were the same (for simple music) or dramatically better (for complex music) than those for the silent condition. On the complex task of learning word pairs, the participants showed a small but reliable benefit with both simple and complex music, relative to silence.

The results suggest that there are substantial individual differences in the impact of music on cognitive function, and thus recommendations regarding its presence in the classroom, study hall or work environment may need to be personalized. Students who are easily bored and who seek out stimulation should be wary of adding music to the mix, especially complex music that may capture attention and consume critical cognitive resources that are needed for successful task completion. On the other hand, students with a low need for stimulation may benefit significantly from the presence of music, especially when completing simple, mundane tasks.

Before students decide to slip in their earbuds, though, they should carefully consider both their musical selection and the nature of the task. All of the music used in the present study was instrumental, and lyrical music will likely be more complex. Complexity appears to increase arousal, and the Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that a moderate level of arousal produces optimal performance. When there is too little or too much arousal, performance drops. Thus, the benefits of music for those with a low need for external stimulation that were observed here could diminish or even disappear with the added complexity of lyrics.

Similarly, increases in the complexity of a cognitive task might also reduce or eliminate the benefit of music. Although the “complex” task used in this study (learning word pairs) was only moderately challenging, the increase in complexity, relative to the simple task, was enough to reduce music’s positive effect. With a highly challenging cognitive task (e.g., text comprehension or exam preparation), even those with a low need for external stimulation may fail to show such an effect with music.

With the right (low-need-for-stimulation) personality, the right (instrumental) music and the right (low-to-moderately-difficult) task, the presence of music may significantly improve cognitive functioning. Given the many other physical, emotional and psychological benefits of music, that subscription to Spotify just might pay for itself!

Cindi May is a professor of psychology at the College of Charleston. She explores avenues for improving cognitive function and outcomes in college students, older adults and individuals who are neurodiverse.

• Advertise your Music
• R&B Artists
• R&B Videos
• Song Guides
• Best Guitar Lessons Near Me
• Best Singing Lessons Near Me
• Live R&B Radio
• Submit Music

The Best Study Music: What to Listen to While Doing Homework

Students and music cannot be separated because they all love music and some can keep their players on an entire day. Music can help lift mood even when the student is alone in their rooms, relaxing outdoors, or walking. In the study room, not all music will be good when you are doing your homework.

You need to concentrate on getting the answers right because some types of music will just keep distracting you and you might lose an important point. The following music is good to listen to during homework time.

Hip hop is generally called hip hop culture because its lovers believe it promotes a music culture globally. Being one of the oldest music genres, Hip hop blends several tunes and vocals into one piece of a song that is vibrant, confronting, and celebrating life.

This is one of the styles of music a student can listen to while doing homework because it mostly speaks about real-life experiences and encourages a listener when they realize they are not the only ones experiencing a challenging moment. It can help encourage a student do homework even when they feel like the task is too difficult for them.

Other type of Homework help

If you want to do well in college, always make an effort to do all the homework your teacher assigns you. It helps improve learning and you will reap the good fruits of education. Despite your efforts to do your best and complete all academic work, sometimes you feel you need help. You don’t have to worry because Edubirdie can do your homework while you concentrate on your study. You can get help from their professional writers any time because they help every student according to their needs.

Country music

Country hits are mostly associated with things that touch on independence and freedom. The artists sing about situations they went through yet overcame. Some sing about terrible adversities like alcoholism, fighting, rejections, and such incidences and how they eventually overcame. Doing a ton of homework is not always easy because some assignments can be tough and complex. The student might feel it was not meant for them but if they can tune and listen to several country hits, they can start feeling encouraged and go on with their assignments.

Jamaican reggae is characterized by features such as amplified guitars, offbeat quavers, electric guitars, and a large number of drums. It is a genre that is more masculine than feminine and male students love this genre. Although it doesn’t have a unique rhythm, reggae reflects culture, values, and spirituality. Some researchers say listening to reggae can help students do better in math because the spirituality in reggae can help condition the mind to learn. If a student has some math to do in their homework subject, they might consider listening to reggae.

Classical music forms a combination of sophisticated tunes and vocals and this is what makes this genre popular. Researchers believe classical music nurtures the soul and helps grow the mind. Other studies say when a student creates a habit of listening to classical music, their language skills develop fast. They also benefit from improved spatial skills, reasoning skills, and better intelligence. These are benefits that can help a student do their homework better.

Instrumental

Instruments-only music was traditionally used as a substitute for vocals and to create music for dancing. Listening to this genre can help an individual learn better about other cultures and appreciate the expertise of instrumentalists. When used by a student, it can help boost critical thinking and improve development for creativity. These are important skills needed for higher student productivity.

Nature sounds

According to recent data, listening to recorded sounds of nature has many benefits to the mind. It helps reduce stress, pain and increase mood. The study further says listening to natural sounds helps an individual create a sense of safety and they can stop worrying about what is happening outside and concentrate on what is before them. A student can do their homework better when listening to recorded natural sounds.

Music has immeasurable benefits to students while at school, commuting, or relaxing. A student can listen to music to improve cognitive skills and enhance their memory. Students who create a habit of listening to music when doing their homework may enjoy doing their assignments without feeling stressed. Currently, there are over 1,000 music genres in the market and this gives a student freedom to choose which genre is best for them .

Author’s Bio:

Robert Everett is a leading writer and works for a marketing agency where is known for marketing collateral, brochures and PPT designing skills. He’s equally good in his freelancing job, where he helps students do their homework and essays on time and effectively. In his free time, he loves cooking Korean food, watching sports shows and learning digital art.

Related Posts

10 Best Otis Redding Songs of All Time

15 Best Rock Bands of All Time

10 Famous Singers from Hawaii

10 Best Linda Ronstadt Songs of All Time

“unholy” by sam smith: deciphering the song’s profound meaning, 10 best pokémon earbuds for gaming and music.

100 Best Worship Songs of All Time

Worship songs are a powerful form of music that serve to uplift, inspire, and connect people with a higher power...

50 Best Southern Gospel Songs of All Time

The Soul Train Award winner for "Best Soul Site," Singersroom features top R&B Singers , candid R&B Interviews , New R&B Music , Soul Music , R&B News , R&B Videos , and editorials on fashion & lifestyle trends.

Trending Posts

• Greatest Singers of All Time
• Best Rappers of All Time
• Best Songs of All Time
• Karaoke Songs
• R Kelly Songs
• Smokey Robinson Songs

Recent Posts

• 10 Best U2 Songs of All Time
• 10 Best Carl Perkins Songs of All Time
• 10 Best Dr John Songs of All Time
• 10 Best Kurt Cobain Songs of All Time
• 10 Best Madonna Songs of All Time
• 10 Best Chris Stapleton Songs of All Time

Good Music – Best Songs by Year (All Genres)

• Best Piano Lessons Near Me
• Best Music Gear

Musical Equipment

• Accessories
• Audio Equipment
• Musical Instruments

© 2023 SingersRoom.com - All Rights Reserved

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

You’ll Never Learn!

Students can’t resist multitasking, and it’s impairing their memory..

Photo by Louisa Goulimaki/AFP/Getty Images

Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their “study observation forms,” the observers watched intently as the students—in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all—opened their books and turned on their computers.

For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University–Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer—and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the Web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students’ screens and noted whether the students were wearing earbuds.

Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.

“We were amazed at how frequently they multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching,” Rosen says. “It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices,” adding, “It was kind of scary, actually.”

Concern about young people’s use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosen’s study , published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior , is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning . Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young people—so common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way.

But evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. So detrimental is this practice that some researchers are proposing that a new prerequisite for academic and even professional success—the new marshmallow test of self-discipline—is the ability to resist a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone.

The media multitasking habit starts early. In “ Generation M 2 : Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds ,” a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and published in 2010, almost a third of those surveyed said that when they were doing homework, “most of the time” they were also watching TV, texting, listening to music, or using some other medium. The lead author of the study was Victoria Rideout, then a vice president at Kaiser and now an independent research and policy consultant. Although the study looked at all aspects of kids’ media use, Rideout told me she was particularly troubled by its findings regarding media multitasking while doing schoolwork.

“This is a concern we should have distinct from worrying about how much kids are online or how much kids are media multitasking overall. It’s multitasking while learning that has the biggest potential downside,” she says. “I don’t care if a kid wants to tweet while she’s watching American Idol , or have music on while he plays a video game. But when students are doing serious work with their minds, they have to have focus.”

For older students, the media multitasking habit extends into the classroom. While most middle and high school students don’t have the opportunity to text, email, and surf the Internet during class, studies show the practice is nearly universal among students in college and professional school. One large survey found that 80 percent of college students admit to texting during class; 15 percent say they send 11 or more texts in a single class period.

During the first meeting of his courses, Rosen makes a practice of calling on a student who is busy with his phone. “I ask him, ‘What was on the slide I just showed to the class?’ The student always pulls a blank,” Rosen reports. “Young people have a wildly inflated idea of how many things they can attend to at once, and this demonstration helps drive the point home: If you’re paying attention to your phone, you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in class.” Other professors have taken a more surreptitious approach, installing electronic spyware or planting human observers to record whether students are taking notes on their laptops or using them for other, unauthorized purposes.

Such steps may seem excessive, even paranoid: After all, isn’t technology increasingly becoming an intentional part of classroom activities and homework assignments? Educators are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as social sites created just for schools, such as Edmodo, to communicate with students, take class polls, assign homework, and have students collaborate on projects. But researchers are concerned about the use of laptops, tablets, cellphones, and other technology for purposes quite apart from schoolwork. Now that these devices have been admitted into classrooms and study spaces, it has proven difficult to police the line between their approved and illicit uses by students.

In the study involving spyware , for example, two professors of business administration at the University of Vermont found that “students engage in substantial multitasking behavior with their laptops and have non-course-related software applications open and active about 42 percent of the time.” The professors, James Kraushaar and David Novak , obtained students’ permission before installing the monitoring software on their computers—so, as in Rosen’s study, the students were engaging in flagrant multitasking even though they knew their actions were being recorded.

Another study , carried out at St. John’s University in New York, used human observers stationed at the back of the classroom to record the technological activities of law students. The spies reported that 58 percent of second- and third-year law students who had laptops in class were using them for “non-class purposes” more than half the time. (First-year students were far more likely to use their computers for taking notes, although an observer did note one first-year student texting just 17 minutes into her very first class—the beginning of her law school career.)

Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learning, according to Rosen. That’s a problem, because these operations are actually quite mentally complex, and they draw on the same mental resources—using language, parsing meaning—demanded by schoolwork.

David Meyer , a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who’s studied the effects of divided attention on learning, takes a firm line on the brain’s ability to multitask: “Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. That’s fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook—each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.”

Young people think they can perform two challenging tasks at once, Meyer acknowledges, but “they are deluded,” he declares. It’s difficult for anyone to properly evaluate how well his or her own mental processes are operating, he points out, because most of these processes are unconscious. And, Meyer adds, “there’s nothing magical about the brains of so-called ‘digital natives’ that keeps them from suffering the inefficiencies of multitasking. They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s far better to focus on one task from start to finish.”

Researchers have documented a cascade of negative outcomes that occurs when students multitask while doing schoolwork. First, the assignment takes longer to complete, because of the time spent on distracting activities and because, upon returning to the assignment, the student has to refamiliarize himself with the material.

Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. The cognitive cost of such task-switching is especially high when students alternate between tasks that call for different sets of expressive “rules”—the formal, precise language required for an English essay, for example, and the casual, friendly tone of an email to a friend.

Third, students’ subsequent memory of what they’re working on will be impaired if their attention is divided. Although we often assume that our memories fail at the moment we can’t recall a fact or concept, the failure may actually have occurred earlier, at the time we originally saved, or encoded, the memory. The moment of encoding is what matters most for retention, and dozens of laboratory studies have demonstrated that when our attention is divided during encoding , we remember that piece of information less well—or not at all. As the unlucky student spotlighted by Rosen can attest, we can’t remember something that never really entered our consciousness in the first place. And a study last month showed that students who multitask on laptops in class distract not just themselves but also their peers who see what they’re doing.

Fourth, some research has suggested that when we’re distracted, our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways. In a 2006 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Russell Poldrack of the University of Texas–Austin and two colleagues asked participants to engage in a learning activity on a computer while also carrying out a second task, counting musical tones that sounded while they worked. Study subjects who did both tasks at once appeared to learn just as well as subjects who did the first task by itself. But upon further probing, the former group proved much less adept at extending and extrapolating their new knowledge to novel contexts—a key capacity that psychologists call transfer.

Brain scans taken during Poldrack’s experiment revealed that different regions of the brain were active under the two conditions, indicating that the brain engages in a different form of memory when forced to pay attention to two streams of information at once. The results suggest, the scientists wrote, that “even if distraction does not decrease the overall level of learning, it can result in the acquisition of knowledge that can be applied less flexibly in new situations.”

Finally, researchers are beginning to demonstrate that media multitasking while learning is negatively associated with students’ grades. In Rosen’s study, students who used Facebook during the 15-minute observation period had lower grade-point averages than those who didn’t go on the site. And two recent studies by Reynol Junco , a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society , found that texting and using Facebook—in class and while doing homework—were negatively correlated with college students’ GPAs. “Engaging in Facebook use or texting while trying to complete schoolwork may tax students’ capacity for cognitive processing and preclude deeper learning,” write Junco and a co-author. (Of course, it’s also plausible that the texting and Facebooking students are those with less willpower or motivation, and thus likely to have lower GPAs even aside from their use of technology.)

Meyer, of the University of Michigan, worries that the problem goes beyond poor grades. “There’s a definite possibility that we are raising a generation that is learning more shallowly than young people in the past,” he says. “The depth of their processing of information is considerably less, because of all the distractions available to them as they learn.”

Given that these distractions aren’t going away, academic and even professional achievement may depend on the ability to ignore digital temptations while learning—a feat akin to the famous marshmallow test. In a series of experiments conducted more than 40 years ago, psychologist Walter Mischel tempted young children with a marshmallow, telling them they could have two of the treats if they put off eating one right away. Follow-up studies performed years later found that the kids who were better able to delay gratification not only achieved higher grades and test scores but were also more likely to succeed in school and their careers.

Two years ago, Rosen and his colleagues conducted an information-age version of the marshmallow test. College students who participated in the study were asked to watch a 30-minute videotaped lecture, during which some were sent eight text messages while others were sent four or zero text messages. Those who were interrupted more often scored worse on a test of the lecture’s content; more interestingly, those who responded to the experimenters’ texts right away scored significantly worse than those participants who waited to reply until the lecture was over.

This ability to resist the lure of technology can be consciously cultivated, Rosen maintains. He advises students to take “tech breaks” to satisfy their cravings for electronic communication: After they’ve labored on their schoolwork uninterrupted for 15 minutes, they can allow themselves two minutes to text, check websites, and post to their hearts’ content. Then the devices get turned off for another 15 minutes of academics.

Over time, Rosen says, students are able extend their working time to 20, 30, even 45 minutes, as long as they know that an opportunity to get online awaits. “Young people’s technology use is really about quelling anxiety,” he contends. “They don’t want to miss out. They don’t want to be the last person to hear some news, or the ninth person to ‘like’ someone’s post.” Device-checking is a compulsive behavior that must be managed, he says, if young people are to learn and perform at their best.

Rideout, director of the Kaiser study on kids and media use, sees an upside for parents in the new focus on multitasking while learning. “The good thing about this phenomenon is that it’s a relatively discrete behavior that parents actually can do something about,” she says. “It would be hard to enforce a total ban on media multitasking, but parents can draw a line when it comes to homework and studying—telling their kids, ‘This is a time when you will concentrate on just one thing.’ ”

Parents shouldn’t feel like ogres when they do so, she adds. “It’s important to remember that while a lot of kids do media multitask while doing homework, a lot of them don’t. One out of five kids in our study said they ‘never’ engage in other media while doing homework, and another one in five said they do so only ‘a little bit.’ This is not some universal norm that students and parents can’t buck. This is not an unreasonable thing to ask of your kid.”

So here’s the takeaway for parents of Generation M: Stop fretting about how much they’re on Facebook. Don’t harass them about how much they play video games. The digital native boosters are right that this is the social and emotional world in which young people live. Just make sure when they’re doing schoolwork, the cellphones are silent, the video screens are dark, and that every last window is closed but one.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University, and MindShift , a news website focusing on innovations in education and new trends in teaching and learning.

• Listening to Music While Doing ...
• 4 Skincare Tips from the ...

Listening to Music While Doing Homework and Studying: Is It A Good Idea?

words Al Woods

Image credit

Nowadays, most students go to the library with their headphones and to the study halls. Although, the question is, does listening to music when studying help? Yes, it may help despite the distractions that come your way. Music can put you in a better mood, and in a better position to study.

You can choose to listen to soothing music because it has several advantages, like helping you beat anxiety and beating your stress while doing your assignments. The following reasons show that listening to music when doing your homework is a good idea.

Reduces anxiety  

When you’re studying, anxiety can be a crippling blockade, and some ways can help you beat the heat, especially when you’re writing that extended essay you were given from school as your homework. For example, you were issued a complimentary massage during each study session in your college period. As a result, your anxiety and tension levels may lower when doing your homework. So, the music’s effect on your anxiety levels during your homework time can be similar to the impact you have when getting a massage.

Your favorite music tune can reduce your anxiety as you do your assignment because it helps you feel relaxed. Also, you can opt to listen to rap music when studying or doing your homework because of the uplifting effect it may give you that may help you manage, accept, and know how to deal with your mental health issues. Since there is more than one genre of rap, you can look for the one that gives your brain the extra support it may want.

Increases creativity 

You may be in a situation where you are working on some assignment stressing you, and you don’t want to die of boredom . In that case, you can consider putting on your school headphones with microphone , then set the volume that you think is best for you, go through your playlist and choose your favorite songs, then enjoy yourself with the most soothing music.

It would help if you regulated your music to avoid distraction and concentrate on your work. The background music you put can help stimulate your abstract thinking and tune your brain towards a creative work mode. That’s why most creative people get attracted to the background noise music played in the cafes or the dams.

Energy motivation

You may be needing a quick pick me up, especially before a marathon writing session, and in this case, one or two stimulating songs can help in boosting your drive in tackling the awaiting drudgery. The music gets to engage the autonomic nervous system of your body, which shows that music can help control your psychological emotions at a certain level. Also, when the music you’re listening to is correct, it can help in serving as a fantastic stimulant that will help your pulse and accelerate breathing. It will help you do your homework well while motivated.

It can help ease your stress

It’s the middle of the semester, and your stress has run high because of the many undone assignments whose deadlines are catching up with you soon. It can be the perfect time to start doing your homework while listening to music. Music can help you reduce stress, especially when it’s not so loud. Even if you may be having some health problems, music can be your stress remover. When you listen to soothing music, it can decrease your heartbeat while reducing your anxiety levels.

Music can also help process your emotions while helping you feel relaxed because of the ups and downs when studying. In addition, you can opt to turn on the theme you can relate to because it will help you deal with your homework stress. So, if your college life has made you feel down or distracted you, then the best idea you should consider is putting some music on. Music will help you concentrate on your assignments and studies and keep your stress at bay while putting you in a learning mood.

Increases your focus 

Music can increase your focus because it can help your brain absorb and easily interpret new information. In this case, when studying, your brain can be processing much information that it receives from the world as it starts separating it into smaller segments. Music can help engage your brain and begin training it to start paying some attention to what you’re learning while making predictions on what may happen. So, it can help you study, especially when you struggle making sense of the new learning materials. Listening to music will make the process better and easier.

Also, it helps in learning where you can link the ability to make better predictions about the reasoning skills events. Of course, improved reasoning may not help pull some answers during exam time. But it’s possible to notice a difference in your reasoning ability based on your information.

Music helps deal with your noisy roommates

You may coexist in space with people who don’t keep quiet. In this case, your roommate may be fond of talking out loud and maybe doesn’t care about the presence of others and the reasons to speak in a composed way. Through this, it’s easy for you to get distracted if your roommate makes endless phone calls and has a lot of conversations. This nightmare can get solved with good noise-canceling headphones and good music. As you do your homework, you can consider music as the only possible way out, especially when you’re not feeling like going to the library.

Helps you memorize new information

When you decide to listen to classical music, it can help you, especially when you want to process some tasks in memory. There is a type of music that may help in boosting your memorization abilities and different cognitive functions. Music will help stimulate your brain, similar to exercising, which promotes your body.

In sum, music can be considered a big part of your daily life because you may need to listen to it, especially when you want to get many things done. In addition, radio or movie music may significantly impact how you understand what you’re learning.

• listen music
• online lifestyle magazine

4 Skincare Tips from the Top Spas

Top Tips For A Good Night’s Sleep

Intrepid fashion, music, art, film, technology & culture magazine. from fanzine to style bible to digital since 1997: stimulate. challenge. evolve..

You May Also Like

• Lifestyle featured

Contacts or glasses? What is the best option for you?

Contacts Or Glasses? What Is the Best Option For You? The eyes are considered ...

• Food Reviews
• Travel & Food
• Travel & Food Featured

Fu Manchu Clapham – New dim sum & cocktail parlour with disco leanings

Fu Manchu, the murderous master criminal from Sax Rohmer’s series of novels; that moustachioed, ...

7 Secret Tips to Plan a Perfect Outdoor Event

words Al Woods It’s nearly impossible to get everything right for an outdoor event. ...

How to stop the cruel practice of bear bile farming

How to stop the cruel practice of bear farming – words Al Woods There ...

The Luffy Shop: The World of One Piece Merchandise

words Al Woods Have you ever been confused about what to give to your ...

Five Things To Consider When Buying A Property

words Alexa Wang Buying a property is an extremely exciting time in life that ...

We Need Your Consent

Privacy overview.

• Food & Drink

latest posts

Schlafly Beer Introduces Vanilla Pumpkin Ale

The Best Music to Listen to While Doing Homework

Research suggests that excessive homework is associated with high stress levels and physical health problems. Now, this is certainly not a happy scene. Education should not be the primary stressor. Rather, it should help children evolve with each passing day.

If you are on the same page, struggling with an assignment, digital academic spaces like MyAssignmenthelp will do it for you by providing homework assistance. Also, there are other amazing ways to keep the odds of homework stress completely at bay. Guess what? It’s none other than music, the ultimate savior.

Whether you need to work on essay topics on music or work on one of those tricky papers on Economics, listening to a few good songs can lift your spirit. Invest some time reading this article and explore the best music to listen to while doing homework.

Here you go!

Relaxing music

You should refrain from tuning in to loud tracks as they hamper concentration. So, it is always better to consider listening to a good set of relaxing music and soothing tracks for better focus and concentration. Such tracks will keep you calm, focused, and determined. You must relax your mind while doing homework. Here is a list of some of the most-heard relaxing songs.

• River by Josh Groban
• Where’s My Love by SYML
• Sense of Home by Harrison Storm
• Tread Lightly by Forest Blakk
• Make It Holy by The Staves
• Someone Out There by Rae Morris
• Glowing Brightly by Florist

Listening to long mixes while doing homework is always a good choice. Such tracks go on for 1-2 hours straight with no hindrances in between. As a result, you can concentrate on the homework topic and keep going without any major roadblocks in between. Now that you are eager to listen to some good long mixes, here are some recommendations.

• Homework and Study – Chill Music Mix
• Lofi Chill Vibe Mix – Homework and Study
• 2 Hour-Long Piano Mix – Concentration Music
• Disney Relaxing Piano Collection – Kno Piano Music
• Beautiful Piano Music – Soothing Relaxation

Now that you know the long mix tracks you should be counting on, let’s move on to the other important segments of this article.

Slow Hip Hop Tracks

The origin of hip-hop and rap is interesting. It involves a lot of word plays, creative inclusions, societal reflections, and the like. Each element is considered the perfect fit for students who aim to achieve more with each passing day. Moreover, hip-hop and rap movements have always contributed to the music scenes across countries and cultures. Listening to good hip-hop tracks while doing homework would be a great choice. Are you looking for recommendations? Here you go!

• Secret Admirer by Sista
• Big Poppa by The Notorious B.I.G.
• My Music by The Sisters
• Next to You by Peaches
• Back and Forth by Titiyo

While these are some of the most-heard hip-hop tracks in recent days, you can always keep an eye out for more. Now, let’s move on to the next best form of music you can listen to while doing homework.

R&B, popularly known as rhythm and blues, is again a popular choice in music, especially among students who like to listen to songs while doing homework. This is, again, one form of music that soothes your ears and helps students focus on their tasks without any hindrance.

Now that you are eager to know about some good tracks in R&B take a look at the following suggestions.

• Untitled by D’Angelo
• The Boy is Mine by Monica
• Return of the Mack by Mark Morrison
• Cranes in the Sky by Solange Knowles
• Let’s Stay Together by AI Green
• Waterfalls by T.L.C.

So, pick your favorite track soon and start working on your homework without finding any hurdles to deal with.

Country Songs

These tracks are an absolute favorite for students choosing good music tracks while doing homework. Country songs are always soothing, soulful, and positive. The stress of homework is real. We acknowledge how tiring it gets after returning home from school and gathering concentration to work on homework assignments.

A few good country music will always help you cope with the stress. Let’s look at some of the greatest recommendations in this matter.

• Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash
• Always On My Mind by Elvis Presley
• Mama Tried by Willie Nelson
• King of the Road by R.E.M.
• Wanted by Hunter Hayes

These are some of the most recommended tracks you can listen to. But that’s not the end of it. There are a lot you can listen to while doing homework. So, let the music bugs do the talking, and may you excel in your homework assignments like a champ.

Things to Consider While Listening to Music and Doing Homework

Now that you know the amazing tracks you can listen to while doing homework, you must be eager to listen to some of the above recommendations. But before that, take some time to consider a few things for optimum outcomes in the long run.

Here’s everything you need to know.

• Do not listen to hard rock tracks and heavy metal compositions.
• Such tracks will only kill concentration and hamper productivity.
• Do not play the music loud on your speaker.
• Instead, try using earphones and keep the volume low so it doesn’t affect your ears.
• Avoid music with too many aggressive lyrics and thoughts that can trigger aggression.
• Also, listen to a good set of instrumentals and classical tracks.
• You can also listen to chants of rain and birds while doing homework.
• Select the playlist beforehand so you don’t have to spend extra hours choosing a tracklist while doing homework.
• You should avoid music on the radio as the RJs keep talking in between, and it can affect your concentration.
• Do not choose depressing music tracks, as they can have a negative impact on your mind and keep you away from focusing.
• Do not listen to music that can diminish your cognitive abilities.

So, keep each of these points in mind, refer to the best practices, and never miss out on focusing completely while doing homework without surrendering to boredom.

Let’s check out some amazing facts about music and homework.

Incredible Facts About Music & Homework

• Music can help improve your memory.
• Music with lyrics activates the language-processing areas of your brain.
• It elevates context-dependent learning and contributes to educational psychology.
• Instrumental music can improve intelligence.

Parting Thoughts

So, you are now aware of the bigger picture and the type of music you should listen to while doing homework. So, embrace the best practices, refer to the suggestions shared above, and let music be the light to guide you through academic hurdles.

After all, good taste in music can improve your world. Good music will always lift your mood and motivate you toward your goal, no matter how stressful the situation. It’s an extremely powerful form of art that can alter our mood, bring up emotions, and boost concentration to a different level. Music has the power to change the world and help keep all forms of aggressive thoughts at bay. More importantly, the right choice in music defines your characteristics and makes you a better human being. Also, it helps provide a total brain workout and reduces anxiety and blood pressure. Guess what? It improves sleep quality, mental awareness, and decision-making skills. So, no matter how tiring the day is or what stress you must deal with, never underestimate the power of good music. It is one of the best forms of medicine that can heal us.

So, let’s contribute more music to this world, support independent artists, defeat piracy, and make the process of doing and submitting homework less stressful and more interactive in all forms.

Cheers, and good luck!

you might also like

Exploring Crypto Havens: Countries Steering the Future with Tax Incentives

Strategic Ways to Cash Out Crypto with Minimal Tax Impact

How to Protect Yourself from SIM Swapping (AT&T)

M usic is an indispensable part of our life and you will hardly meet a person who doesn’t like listening to it. Of course, it can be a music of different genres, with or without lyrics, modern or classical, but people enjoy listening to music and can combine a variety of activities with it.

Young generations are also fans of music and every second student has always his headphones. Students listen to music everywhere: on-the-go, in public transport, in the shower and even when they do their homework. However, the last habit is quite controversial as scientists have different opinions about the effect music produces on studying. Let’s analyze the viewpoints of different scholars and decide whether pros or cons of listening to music while you do your homework will outweigh.

How can music be beneficial?

It is not surprising to see different studies about the influence of music on learning and their results are sometimes opposite to each other. Some scientists claim that music can influence the brain work positively as well as provide a learner with some huge advantages including:

• Useful for creative and reflection activities The study done at John Hopkin’s University confirms the viewpoint that music can be a great boost in writing , brainstorming, project work, problem-solving activities. It can improve productivity as well as be a perfect solution for several minutes of rest to recharge for the next activity.

Negative impact of music on doing homework

At the same time, many students still call music a distraction. Why does it happen? The answer is simple, students speak about absolutely different styles of music.

It goes without saying that listening to the song with words you will be more likely to distract from studying by repeating the words of the singer. This fact was confirmed by the University of Phoenix where researchers have proved that lyrics activates language-processing centers of the brain and that results in a lack of concentration and difficulties to recall the memorized information .

The last fact was described in the book “ Educational Psychology ”. Context-dependent learning means that people will recall information better in the same environment how they were memorizing it. If it was a music background at home, there are few chances that this background will be at school too, so information recalling will suffer greatly as well.

One more apparent point is a huge difference in people’s learning styles. Some people will have a much better productivity studying in silence, the others chewing a burger and one more group watching a TV. Music can be beneficial only to some of the students as any sound can affect the performance of others negatively. Consequently, it is impossible to make the only right conclusion about the ultimate benefit or the toughest negative impact of music on student’s performance of the home assignment. The only conclusion is apparent: everything depends on the person and his study environment .

• Latest Posts

Latest posts by Noplag ( see all )

• Periodix: intelligent job matching for freelancers | Noplag review - March 30, 2018
• Hard Work VS Talent: Who Beats Whom? - December 15, 2017
• Listening To Music While Doing Homework: Is It A Good Idea? - December 12, 2017

Share the post "Listening To Music While Doing Homework: Is It A Good Idea?"

Post navigation

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Featured on

SiOWfa15: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy

The course website and blog for the fall 2015 instance of penn state's sc200 course.

Listening to Music While Doing Homework/Studying Lead To Better Results?

While sitting down to study in the Findlay Commons I look around and notice all the different study habits between students. A certain study habit is more effective for someone in comparison to others because all brains work differently when trying to integrate memorization or muscle memory.  A study shows the most effective study habits include practicing by yourself, memory games, and going to your own quiet place. Those ways are typically the way I study. But, when I walk around the commons I notice more people than not wearing headphones and studying. I never really understood the reasoning of listening to music while studying because it is another voice in your head that takes away the sole purpose of memorization. Since I never understood the meaning for this interesting study habit, I researched whether music leads to better results for those that listen to it.

I tried to listen to music while studying and could not focus on the task at hand. But, a study shows that music is beneficial when studying. A study done by Elana Goodwin states, “ Studies have shown that listening to music before studying or performing a task can be beneficial as it improves attention, memory, and even your ability to do mental math as well as helping lessen depression and anxiety.” The researchers typically compare this to the Mozarts Effect. For those who do not know, the Mozarts Effect is a study that shows while listening to Mozart’s music one receives a short-term improvement in their capabilities.

But, I found a flaw in there correlation with Mozarts Effect. I walked up to 10 different kids in the Findlay commons that were studying for a quiz or midterm and listening to music. I proceeded to ask them what genre of music they were listening to and whom. The responses varied from rap, to pop, to country, but none of them had Mozarts’ pieces playing in their earbuds. The survey take was very small, but typically high school/college students who have proven to benefit from listening to music while studying are listening to different genres.

Another study done also proves that listening to music can effect studying. But, the studying must be an organizational related study. Perham, the researcher involved in the study claims, “Listening to music may diminish your cognitive abilities in these situations because when you’re trying to memorize things in order, you can get thrown off and confused by the various words and notes in the song playing in the background.” The organization of one’s study can be altered because of the words or beat that is constantly in one’s head. The music genre does not matter, the sound effects the performance in itself.

The studies shown prove that music can be both beneficial and digressive. Differentiating between the type of study someone is engaged in plays a key factor. Also, the person’s tolerance level to noise and whether they use it progressively can determine whether they listen to music while studying. Studying should not be based off other peoples’ opinions of how study. There is no better way to study but your own because different study habits make one more comfortable in comparison to others. This study shows that I should not be so quick to judge other students and how they study because maybe they find it beneficial. Some people succeed when put in specific scenarios, and one scenario I will never find useful is music during study hours, but people are different and results vary.

Works-Cited:

1.) http://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/149570/Do-Or-Dont-Studying-While-Listening-To

2.) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/

3.) http://psychcentral.com/lib/top-10-most-effective-study-habits/2/

4.) http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/10/08/does-music-help-you-study/

8 thoughts on “ Listening to Music While Doing Homework/Studying Lead To Better Results? ”

While studying, some people prefer to listen to music. Others need total silence, it just depends on who you are and what helps you study. The reason why some people need to listen to music is to either crete a background noise, or to relax them and lower stress levels. It has been proven that stress levels are decreased by music. The student could possibly be stressed out over what he or she is studying for, and the music would bring that stress level back down. Additionally, music can relax people to the point where their attention is 100% focused on what they are studying. The music just creates this calm throughout their body and enables them to concentrate extremely hard on what they are doing. Aside from making them feel better, the music will block out excess noise in the room from other students whispering to each other or the rustling of papers. These are all the positive effects music should have on studying. If the music is causing a negative effect on studying I would highly suggest changing study habits, but that’s a given. Over all, each person is different and if their “thing” while studying is music than so be it, let them listen to music. There is no way it can harm the others around them, who are probably too focused with their own work to notice them anyway.

Earlier in the blog period, I created a similar blog asking the same question. This is a topic that generally interests me as I alway do my homework with music playing in the background. However, I always want to make sure that I am working in an efficient manner. So if that means changing my listening preferences and saving an hour of time I would normally spend changing the song I’m interested. The one aspect that your blog as well as mine both concluded was that music while studying strictly is based upon the individual. There are a number of confounding variables that come into play that can influence this data. For example, genre, tone, volume, rate, and whether or not the person is accustomed to working with music can all make a difference in their performance. I have attached a link to the blog post I made regarding the same subject, I hope it can add some more information to this subject. http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/10/19/23167/

I agree with you, I cannot study with music on. It distracts me too. However, I have witnessed the same thing, many students here at Penn State have their earbuds in whenever they are doing work, so clearly your findings are correct- results vary and everyone is different. If you want, you can read this article, it has a lot of information on this topic too 🙂 http://college.usatoday.com/2012/09/10/should-you-listen-to-music-while-you-study/

I found your blog interesting because I always listen to music while I study. I just find it calming and relaxing and helps me read at a faster tempo. It seems there are some theories on the impact of music and studying. Some scientists say that if you’re doing any language-related work your should stay away from music with lyrics tied in because your mind will try to process what the song is saying and will ignore the mental process of the reading/writing being done. It seems like the theory also states that if you’re doing math related work music with lyrics might not be so problematic.

While scrolling through posts this one immediately intrigued me, most likely because i am currently listening to music and often do while studying. From my perspective, I have found listening to music while doing work very beneficial, but the genre is very important to me. I actually have found that rap may have a negative effect while studying but listening to old artists like ludwig van beethoven keeps me extremely focused on the task at hand. Definitely not the most exciting music, but it gets the job done.

I’m with you whenever I try to put on music while studying it completely messes with my train of thought. I can’t focus, instead I am the person who just keeps changing the song and not able to find one I like. In the car I am the person who listens to half a song then gets bored and changes it. But, I am the person who can watch TV while studying and doing homework without issue. I put on my netflix show and just let it play. I have found that I relate certain things I was studying or reading to something I heard from the show that was playing. Here is a personal blog from someone who also feels that TV helped them to study.

I have studied listening to Mozart before, and completed assignments this same way as well. There have also been times were I couldn’t focus because the music was too drawing to my attention. My only question would be could this depend on the topic that I was studying?

I found your blog post to be very interesting. As I study in Findlay Commons as well I constantly find myself looking around at others studying and I easily become very distracted. I usually put my headphones in and listen to music while studying, I have noticed that this enhances my performance as I am able to block out any other sounds. I enjoyed reading about all of the studies conducted on this topic, and find it interesting to read about the different effects that music can have on ones studies. I found an article that weighed out some positives and negatives on listening to music while studying. It includes some great points as well so I hope you give it a read!

http://college.usatoday.com/2012/09/10/should-you-listen-to-music-while-you-study/

Comments are closed.

Get the Reddit app

This is a place for engineering students of any discipline to discuss study methods, get homework help, get job search advice, and find a compassionate ear when you get a 40% on your midterm after studying all night.

Does doing homework/studying while listening to music reduce your retention?

I enjoy listening to music while I study and do homework. I was just wondering if there is a chance that I would be learning better if I was not listening to music? Does anyone else feel this way?

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

• Have your assignments done by seasoned writers. We work 24/7. Just email us at:
• [email protected]

Is Listening to Music while doing Homework OK: 21 best Songs

Listening to music doing homework

Listening to music while doing your homework has always caused divisions in its effectiveness. Some argue that it is advantageous, while others argue that it does not help.

As long as the music doesn’t affect your concentration, then there is no reason why you should not play several songs as you do your homework.

This will help you if you want to handle assignments well. However, if you have no time for that, you hire an assignment writer to do the job for you.

Need Help with your Homework or Essays?

Is it ok to listen to music while doing homework.

The answer to this question is twofold. Music can help put us in a better mood, which is good for studying. Music can also distract us, which is not good when studying.

It is OK to listen to music while doing homework if it does not distract you from your studies. In fact, if you get used to listening to your favorite songs, you can increase the amount of time you spend doing assignments. However, listening to music can be a distraction from your studies if you are not used to it or if it is not your favorite playlist.

For music to be effective when studying, the rate at which it disturbs you should be reduced, and the rate at which it makes you feel good should be increased. 

Research has shown that listening to music while doing tests can boost your scores.

This is due to the ability of music to stimulate parts of the mind that play a role in mathematical ability.

This theory about maths was debunked, and it was concluded that the main reason music can make you do well in tests is its ability to put you in a better mood.

Kids enjoyed more pop music than classical music.

Children who listened to pop did better in tests, as per the research. When music makes us feel good, we try harder, and our minds are willing to take on challenging tasks. 

Music can distract us when studying. When you are studying, your mind manipulates several types of information at once and music can distract that.

The working memory gets worse when listening to music with vocals. Vocals and music lyrics can decrease reading comprehension. Introverts are easily overstimulated and listening to music while studying can distract them more than extroverts.

Bill Thompson, a researcher based in Australia, found that the performance of people when studying can be decreased by listening to music that is both loud and fast.

Those who listened to slow and soft music were less distracted. The difference was not too big. The decrease in performance was minimal.

Therefore, it is fair to conclude that listening to music while you are studying is fine if it puts you in a good mood and it is not too fast or loud.

If you are not an introvert, listening to music while studying is less distracting. Less wordy music is fine to listen to while studying. 

Why Do Students Listen to Music While Studying?

If you turn on music every time you study, it can become a stereotype that can help trigger your mental activity.

Students listen to music while studying to trigger their mental activity as they study. Some report that they enjoy music playing in the background as part of the studying environment. Students also listen to music as a form of entertainment while doing homework, a task they find boring.

Music can prepare and tune your mind to do assignments.

The following are reasons why students listen to music while doing their assignments:

1. It Helps Students Relax before Learning

Music can help you cope with stress.

In research conducted by the US Department of Homeland Security, it was concluded that soothing music consisted of classical pieces, and it helped reduce the level of cortisol in the blood.

The music had an analgesic and sedative effect, too. Turning on the appropriate music can help you relax after a long day of classes and concentrate on your assignments. 

2. Improves Concentration

When it is hard for students to concentrate and do their homework, music helps them to find motivation. Music helps create conditions that are right and comfortable for brain activity.

Mozart music, for example, according to scientists, helps improve alertness and concentration. Students can gather information and thoughts as well as process a rich flow of information. Using MRI, scientists concluded that music affects the most active parts of the brain.

3. It Improves Memory

Soft music plays a significant role in activating neural connections that impact cognitive performance as well as improving memory. Soft music increases intellectual indicators.

It enables students to remember new information better and be less biased in solving very unfamiliar problems. Students can rely on soft music to learn faster and improve memory.

4. Helps Increase Creativity

The average noise level is an example of a creative catalyst. If boredom is killing you as you are working on several assignments, you can put on your headphones to your desired volume and set your favorite playlist.

This gives students some pleasure as they work on their assignments. Always note that loud volumes may end up ruining your concentration.

Background noises complicate the process of processing information and stimulate abstract thinking, hence tuning the brain into a creative work mode. 

5. Helps Deal with Noisy Roommates

Most students live together in school hostels. Roommates at many times interfere with each other’s work. A roommate can be a very talkative person and merely cares about the presence of others.

Sometimes, they don’t see the need to keep silent. Music and noise-cancelling headphones can easily help you deal with this problem. Music can be the only way you have to concentrate on your work if the library is closed. 

5. Music Helps Feel Blue Without Any Consequences

Music boosts the psychology of students. Students often think about their problems when they are studying. According to psychologist Stean Kelsch, positively listening to sad music affects emphatic qualities.

A student can then easily cope with problems. Students listen to performers, associate with them, and empathize with them. The brain then can control emotions and allow the student to let out negative emotions.

The sadness that comes with listening to sad music does not cause consequences that are the same as real sadness caused by difficult situations.

6. Music Motivates Students to Study

Students face the challenge of knuckling down to studies. Sticking to studies once you have started is also a problem among many students.

Students’ favorite tunes help them deal with this by creating a playlist of songs that get them in the zone. If you don’t feel like doing your homework , you can use music as a motivator.

They get excited about the assignment they are about to do and focus on the outcomes.

Listening to music helps release dopamine in the brain, which is a feel-good chemical, according to scientists.

Tracing of neural mechanisms using tomography was used by scientists in the study.

It showed that listening to music helps increase blood flow and activate the brain parts that are responsible for emotions, motivation, and excitement. 

Get a Brilliant Essay today!

Let our essay writing experts help you get that A in your next essay. Place your order today, and you will enjoy the benefits.

List of 21 Good Songs to Listen to While Doing Homework

The challenge when it comes to selecting music to listen to when doing your homework comes with the type of songs. Do not choose music that distracts your need to stay focused.

Everyone can have a different list of songs depending on their favorite playlists. The music preference can be piano, acoustic guitar, classical music, Jazz, reggae, or any other genre.

The following is an example of a playlist that you can listen to when doing your homework:

• Jelly 292 –Jimi Hendrix
• Don’t play with my heart – India Shawn
• Death bed coffee for your head – Powu t Beabadoobee
• Friends Don’t Look at Friends That Way – Tate McRae 
• Say Something – A Great Big World, Christina Aguilera
• The Birth and Death of the Day –Explosions in the Sky
• What If I Told You I Love You – Alie Gate
• I hate you, I love you – Gnash t Olivia O’Brien
• Ad Astra Per Aspera –Acceptance
• Out of My Mind- John Mayer
• Happier – Olievier Rodrigo
• Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX) –Pink Floyd
• Guilty Cubicles –Broken Social Scene
• Red-Eye –The Album Leaf
• You Don’t Even Know – The Internet ft. Tay Walker
• Open Eye Signal – Jon Hopkins
• Symphony No. 40 in G minor, First Movement – Mozart
• Canon. –Zox
• Svefn-G-Englar –Sigur Rós
•  Stone Cold Heart – Ana Whiterose x RUDENKO
• Let Me Down Slowly – Alec Benjamin.

Josh Jasen or JJ as we fondly call him, is a senior academic editor at Grade Bees in charge of the writing department. When not managing complex essays and academic writing tasks, Josh is busy advising students on how to pass assignments. In his spare time, he loves playing football or walking with his dog around the park.

Related posts

using chegg considered cheating

Is using Chegg Cheating? How to not get caught cheating 2023

Chegg vs Course Hero: Which is Better, Accurate and Safer

Take my online class

Take my Online Class for me: Pay the Best for Reliable Grade